On a day when the U.S. Labor Department says that the economy created zero jobs in the month of August, fresh data from the Federal Reserve suggests that one key component of U.S. gross domestic product growth — the vaunted …
credit cards
Discover Discontinues Random-Number Security Feature
Discover Financial Services is discontinuing a security tool that allowed cardholders to request a randomly generated, one-time-use card number they could utilize for online or card-not-present transactions for which they …
New Hybrid Card Convenient But Potentially Expensive
Fifth Third bank has debuted a hybrid credit-debit card called Duo, which is linked to both a checking account and a line of credit. But beware: Using the card could be costly.
Credit Card APRs Nearing Record Highs
Listen up, cardholders: Make the most of teaser rates while they last. Credit card issuers are aggressively courting new customers with zero percent introductory APRs and balance transfer rates equally as low, but standard APRs …
New Tool Uses Webcams to ‘Read’ Credit Cards
There’s been a lot of buzz lately about mobile payments technologies like Square, a little white box that plugs into an iPhone and essentially turns it into a credit card processing tool. Small business owners and entrepreneurs …
Could Your Credit Card Information be Hacked?
If you think the British tabloid phone-hacking scandal has nothing to do with your personal financial information, think again. A consumer advocate savvy in high-tech financial security discovered that similar tricks used by hackers to break into people’s voicemail accounts could also be exploited to gain access to confidential credit …
Attorney Suing Airline for Not Accepting Cash
Back-to-School Special: 5 Top-of-the-Class Credit Cards for Students
While the Credit CARD Act cut down on a lot of the shady marketing practices credit card issuers used to target college students, there are still a plethora of cards out there for the campus crowd, and wading through them can be …
Back-to-School Special: 9 Credit-Card Tips For Students
Even as school starts up again around the country, students may already be falling behind in one critical area of knowledge: How to choose and use credit cards. Unfortunately, until financial education is taught in high schools …
When is $11.4 Trillion in Debt an Improvement?
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a report on Monday that shows America is chipping away at its collective debt — but slowly. According to the Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, overall consumer debt was down by $50 billion at the end of June. If that seems like a lot, it’s not; in fact, it’s a measly 0.4 percent …
Visa Puts Its Weight Behind New Smartphone Payment Systems
This week, Visa began campaigning to get retailers in the U.S. to upgrade their payment terminals — what we used to call cash registers — to devices capable of reading EMV chips, the technology behind “chip-and-pin” cards now …
Did Capital One Just Buy Your Credit Card?
Capital One’s been on quite the buying spree lately. Earlier this year it acquired online bank ING Direct, and now it’s just tossed the U.S. credit card portfolio of HSBC Holdings into its shopping cart, as well. HSBC has been …